


He will wake up drowning

by Anonymous



Series: El's nonexistent nonfics [1]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Bombed thrice, Depression, Drowning, Fuck Dream All My Homies Hate Dream, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Isolation, exile arc, no beta we die like l'manberg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28696485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Exile is lonely, it's lonely and empty and the feeling it inspires in Tommy is akin to the feeling he gets when he wakes up underwater and choking.
Series: El's nonexistent nonfics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2103498
Comments: 2
Kudos: 80
Collections: Anonymous





	He will wake up drowning

**Author's Note:**

> God the way the dream smp storyline has gone makes me yearn for the days where the worst thing we had was TommyInnit at hotmail dot co dot uk exile angst.

The isolation he finds himself in is a cloying, suffocating thing.

Tommy wakes up unable to breathe, submerged deep in the water that laps against the shores of his new- place of occupation. _(Not home never home)_

The first time Tommy wakes up drowning, only a few metres away from the shoreline, with screaming lungs set in his chest and a layer of gently brushing sand crawling over his arms, dancing with the rhythm of the waves, there is a streak of raw unadulterated terror that shoots through his soul. 

He desperately kicks up towards the surface where the soft new dawn of yet another day in isolation lightly falls against the top of the waves. He makes it to the shore, coughing and hacking water out of his lungs the entire time. He's panicked, he's scared, and he doesn't know how the fuck he ended up there.

_(Something sad and angry in the back of his head half-wishes he had stayed where had had found himself, fallen back asleep, lured by flaming lungs and darkening vision to a place where he wouldn't have to worry, wouldn't have to care-)_

_(the first time, it's too quiet to hear. It gets louder)_

The distance he swam to get back to dry land was pitiful, but for some reason the exertion makes his limbs _burn_.

It happens again.

And again.

And as Tommy learns to deal with isolation _(he doesn't learn to deal with it at all)_ , learns to deal with the almost echoing quality his every move has in an area so wide and so empty, learns to deal with every loud noise making him flinch, learns to deal with Dreams visits being the only other voice he hears beside his own _(not that he talks much, nowadays)_ , he also learns to deal with-

No.

He doesn't get _used_ to waking up in water, not exactly. He doesn't get used to always coming to consciousness right as his vision begins to fade due to suffocation, but the choking sensation of almost-drowning gets mixed in with the choking feeling of loneliness, and sometimes he gets the panic that constricts his airways when he realises he's _dying_ confused with the bitter thing that lodges itself solidly in his throat when he gets visited by Dream, stalling his words and and making it harder to breathe, he can't breathe, he-

_He can't breathe-_

He sits in the grass next to his only friend and stays silent and nods along as Dream speaks half to himself, and half to him. He speaks when the older man tilts his head toward him, signalling that it is _his turn_ to speak,

_(when has he ever waited his turn when has he ever not shouted and shrieked because he needed to be heard? probably around the same time he started coming to underwater)_

and when he does speak his voice is quieter than it's ever been before, but still it sounds far too strong to Tommy's ears, which have grown used to the quiet. It sounds far stronger than he feels, he thinks to himself, as he speaks past the lump in his throat, cold and constricting. 

Dream leaves and Tommy watches him step through the nether portal that dimly lights the sunset-coloured ground around it in a haunting purple tint, and Dream watches him watch him, and then turns his head away from Tommy right before he disappears.

Tommy sits in the grass, and it starts to rain. He sits in the grass until he's soaked through and he can't feel his fingers and he's so wet the rain water must be caressing his bones. Stumbling half-numb back to his tent, Tommy doesn't attempt to dry himself off before he crawls into bed, and Tommy doesn't attempt to force the bitter thing in the back of his throat and in his chest constricting his every breathe to ease, because Tommy knows that come morning 

he will wake up drowning.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this ages back I just had it sitting in my notes app so I thought "yeah why not" and threw it out there. Remember the exile arc?????? The simpler times????


End file.
